Civilization's Most Controversial Lost Mod (with proof!)
Jun 2, 2023 4:46:25 GMT
awesomereesee, extremewreck2000, and 1 more like this
Post by sigmahero045 on Jun 2, 2023 4:46:25 GMT
Can anyone help me on this? This is the most famous, most controversial mod to have ever possibly come from the modding scene of Civilization V. I came SO close to finding it, the popular mod that took the community by storm in 2015 : the ISIS civilization mod that adds the titular terrorist group as a playable civilization in the game, led by the leader of the time, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It had been deleted since by its author with nothing seemingly preserved of it except a few screenshots (like this one) and some discussions online on CivFanatics (the main forum of modders of the game) and Reddit that were cut short due to the taboo nature of the mod in question. Let me give first some background : we're in late 2015, right around the approximate time of this mod creation this group started making terrorist attacks that deeply shocked Europe. An user (whom I mistakenly presumed was Kobazco, known for Fire Emblem civs, due to some falsy memory but this wasn't them after all) made this civ on Steam Workshop (where user content for the game is shared) that made a lot of noise and controversy despite it not being done out of support for the group, which led later to it being deleted by the author. I actually had downloaded the mod just for how audacious it was given the current climate as well as adding another civ to my collection, but eventually lost it due to the nature of the game that take the deletion of a mod (which at the time I took directly from the Workshop, so it is linked to it, not an independent separated file) as an update for you to download that I accidently clicked on, thus leaving it to update into nothingness. I tried searching for it in years but didn't really gave it a proper deep search until April where I managed to find the OTHER big lost mod of Civilization V (the Assyria mod led with Sammumarat, on this thread). So I'm actually serious about this, this is very much real, no vague memory here to waste your time. I want to preserve it for its historic value in the history of the community and a product of the times it was made in.
And here's now the interesting part, I actually managed to find an archived URL of the main page of the mod hub of Steam Workshop showing the most popular fanmade content of the week right there, PROOVING its existence for a start (web.archive.org/web/20150923195756/http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=8930) at the top bottom right. Unfortunately, contrary to the Assyria mod, it wasn't properly archived despite its popularity and obvious risk to being deleted. From this, we now finally have information that wasn't available before on the Internet such as the name of the ACTUAL creator, LivingLikeLogan, who deleted all possible content they made for the game, as well as showing it was done as a joke (that ultimately went badly) and that its fate still happened despite tons of warnings about how it wasn't made to offend anyone (for the record there are Axis countries mods in the community without any real backlash strong enough to have them deleted). Next I tried looking into archivals of links of fanmade content downloaders (which helped me find the other lost mod). Nope, nothing saved from what I've seen. Next I tried looking into other places that could have saved it and I found a Korean website that hosts many civs and even had a Google Drive that had it, nope, no more here and not preserved. This Korean site also had another link that seemingly was a reupload on the Workshop of the mod, nothing archived or left from it or the downloaders (again, from those I checked, might have missed one). Next, I tried contacting the author, who has a YouTube channel that visibly seems to belong to him (his username with "Civilization V mods" next to it) that has no videos but due to the change of URLs on YouTube with the @, doesn't seem like I'll be able to find older archives of this channel and the possible videos that would be in it. There is a Twitter account but I'm not sure it's theirs and I don't currently feel like make myself an account into such a dreaded platform with no privacy policy.
So that leaves us with three options to make it Found Media :
A) Contacting the creator on Steam or on Twitter (I gave them an invite to be on their Steam contact list, now waiting). They might however not have it anymore.
B) Someone that still has the mod on their mod folder of the game (tell me if you need help finding it) can reupload it somewhere.
C) Steam seems to preserve all fanmade content ever made in a special URL (like this one for the Assyria mod cloud-3.steamusercontent.com/ugc/318998465893664238/7DBFBED54105EF80C05E8A96B8E66649CB60766C/), but now the thing is to find what is the right sequence of numbers that hosts it if its possible.
Thank you deeply to anyone reading this, especially if you want to help make another lost mod found like other one. Fanmade content is important to preserve too, especially if they are major within the fan communities histories, like this one definitely is.
And here's now the interesting part, I actually managed to find an archived URL of the main page of the mod hub of Steam Workshop showing the most popular fanmade content of the week right there, PROOVING its existence for a start (web.archive.org/web/20150923195756/http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=8930) at the top bottom right. Unfortunately, contrary to the Assyria mod, it wasn't properly archived despite its popularity and obvious risk to being deleted. From this, we now finally have information that wasn't available before on the Internet such as the name of the ACTUAL creator, LivingLikeLogan, who deleted all possible content they made for the game, as well as showing it was done as a joke (that ultimately went badly) and that its fate still happened despite tons of warnings about how it wasn't made to offend anyone (for the record there are Axis countries mods in the community without any real backlash strong enough to have them deleted). Next I tried looking into archivals of links of fanmade content downloaders (which helped me find the other lost mod). Nope, nothing saved from what I've seen. Next I tried looking into other places that could have saved it and I found a Korean website that hosts many civs and even had a Google Drive that had it, nope, no more here and not preserved. This Korean site also had another link that seemingly was a reupload on the Workshop of the mod, nothing archived or left from it or the downloaders (again, from those I checked, might have missed one). Next, I tried contacting the author, who has a YouTube channel that visibly seems to belong to him (his username with "Civilization V mods" next to it) that has no videos but due to the change of URLs on YouTube with the @, doesn't seem like I'll be able to find older archives of this channel and the possible videos that would be in it. There is a Twitter account but I'm not sure it's theirs and I don't currently feel like make myself an account into such a dreaded platform with no privacy policy.
So that leaves us with three options to make it Found Media :
A) Contacting the creator on Steam or on Twitter (I gave them an invite to be on their Steam contact list, now waiting). They might however not have it anymore.
B) Someone that still has the mod on their mod folder of the game (tell me if you need help finding it) can reupload it somewhere.
C) Steam seems to preserve all fanmade content ever made in a special URL (like this one for the Assyria mod cloud-3.steamusercontent.com/ugc/318998465893664238/7DBFBED54105EF80C05E8A96B8E66649CB60766C/), but now the thing is to find what is the right sequence of numbers that hosts it if its possible.
Thank you deeply to anyone reading this, especially if you want to help make another lost mod found like other one. Fanmade content is important to preserve too, especially if they are major within the fan communities histories, like this one definitely is.